


The Beautiful Creature

by DemonBlade



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonBlade/pseuds/DemonBlade
Summary: A group of archaeologists has begun a dig in the Canadian tundra. When an intern discovers an unexpected sheet of glass the boss starts acting strange. What they discover beneath that glass is beautiful and deadly. Like an avalanche, unstoppable and breathtaking.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	The Beautiful Creature

Hareneta Silvercoin was assigned along with 5 of her coworkers to guard a group of archaeologists digging in the northern reaches of Canada. The group consisted of 3 trained archaeologists and 6 interns. They were all from the University of Alabeho Heins. The university isn’t who hired her and her mercs though. That was part and parcel of a grant from world-renown information technology company: Gynax.

About a week into the dig one of the young kids, some 20-year-old intern on their first dig finds something weird. They were at the edge of the dig site, nowhere near where they should have been, and they hit something that wasn’t rock or soil. The head researcher and Harenta made their way over and with a small spray of water and a lot of brushing, they found what looked to be a large glass panel. 

Normally a shard or two of glass wasn’t entirely uncommon just like any litter, but the dig site was about a hundred miles from the nearest town, and the team had dug down nearly 6 feet. They continued to excavate the area, but the glass never seemed to end. It expanded further and further into the surrounding ground. 

After a couple of hours, a nearly 10-foot expanse of the glass had been revealed and you could just about tell the gentle curve of the structure. It seemed to be a dome sprouting from the permafrost and rock. 

As far as the staff could tell, there didn’t seem to be anything under the glass. Within whatever sphere-like structure it formed was a hollow space without light. A seemingly infinite darkness in which nothing could be seen. One of the interns, a gal named Nancy, asked if they could just smash through to see what was inside. 

The head archaeologist said “While the contents of the glass is definitely a scientific miracle, there are too many things that could go wrong. The glass could be supporting the ground we’re standing on, and if that is the case, shattering it may cause the ground to collapse and crush us with it. Then there are the issues of contaminating whatever is inside and outside of the glass. But the biggest issue of all is that based on the curvature of the glass, the structure is likely far more land than our grant will allow us to excavate. I’ll have to work on getting another grant to excavate it fully. For now, let’s just be content with theories and finish up our work for today. When we get back to camp I’ll work on the next project.” 

The researchers went back to their digging and the guards when back to their patroling, but Hareneta had a hard time focusing on her rounds. Every time she walked near that pit of glass she found herself staring at it for just a bit longer than she meant to. She wondered, for the first time in the weeks since she was assigned this job, why a group of archaeologists in the baron north of Canada needed 5 armed mercenaries. 

That night Hareneta got all the answers she was looking for. The clock struck 6 and the interns were sent back with one of the professors and 2 of the guards. The head researcher and the remaining professor made their way to the glass pit. The professor opened a crate he grabbed from the truck and placed a machine against the glass. All of the mercenaries watched with a silent fascination, knowing better than to speak but curious none the less.

The lady in charge pressed a button within the open crate and the machine whirred to life. Four small legs shot out and attached themselves to what should have been a slick surface. It stood and stumbled around for a few moments before finding what is apparently was looking for. It stood about a foot from the edge of the pit and stood straight up. An arm slowly extended and thin panels of lights lit up along its body. When the arm fully extended a small laser shot out into the glass and the arm slowly rotated the arm around itself. When the loop was complete the droid and its glass perch fell straight down into the earth.

The mercenaries audibly gasped and looked to the researchers for what to do, but they stood there calmly expectant. Hareneta hazarded the question, “Miss Fall, what is the robot doing... exactly?”

The head archaeologist Ghana Fall looked dumbfounded for a moment before answering, “Well Ms Silvercoin, it will hover around the dome and record a video of what it finds. Charles here hooked its visual sensors to this clunky computer,” She gestures to the crate where Hareneta can now see a computer screen depicting what appeared to be a dark forest.

“If that’s the video feed of the drone, then why is it showing a forest? There’s not seriously an underground forest right?” She looked up to Ghana with confusion. That kind of thing only happens in movies right?

“Well Gynax wanted us to find this thing and keep it on the down-low, apparently they think there are a bunch of ecosystems in domes under the Canadian tundra. I guess they were right.” 

Charles looks up from the computer and with a nervous quiver in his voice calls for Ghana Fall, “Ghana?”

“Did you find something good?” turning back to the screen the two girls freeze. The video has frozen on a picture of a human face with yellow eyes and blue fangs. They are awoken from their trance by a crash as the robot crumples between them. They look over to the hole in the glass where a human hand, gaunt and pale with long electric blue claws reaches out. The mercenaries take out their weapons and are about to fire before Dr Fall tells them to wait. “They might need help,” she says, walking over to the pit. She reaches down and grabs its hand. For a short moment, she seems to be making progress, she pulls its impossibly long arm out to the shoulder.

The arm, as long as Dr Fall’s leg, suddenly yanked down and pulled her into the dome. They didn’t hear her scream as she fell, she died the moment her skull slammed into the edge of the pit. They heard her neck snap and her skull crack and they knew she was gone. Everyone stood stock still for several seconds, astonished at the brutality of the scene. But it didn’t last long. The creature continued to claw its way out of the pit squeezing through the small hole. It stood taller than any man, with wild yellow eyes that glimmered like amber filled with sadistic glee as they soaked in the terror of its victims. It smiled a smile too wide for its face and within its predatory maw rested teeth. Too many teeth, each sharpened to at least one point. A long purple wormlike tongue flicked across its carnivorous electric blue teeth. It stood above the dome and if she didn’t know the glass was below it, it would have looked for all the world as if the being was floating on a sheet of abyssal darkness. 

The mercs fired. They put a dozen bullet holes each. It was pushed to the edge of the pit with the force. It slumped to the ground. Bobby Ite, the oldest in the team walked over and put a knife in the chest of the creature, “just to be sure,” he said. He grabbed its jaw and moved the large head side to side, studying it like a particularly interesting piece of bark.

He screamed as his thumb was bitten off. The creature grabbed him by the throat, its long clawed hand easily encircling his neck and lifted him from the ground like a can of soda. An apt expression given the way his head was removed from his body. She could almost hear the iconic sound in the crack of bone and the spray of blood.

It rushed the next merc and impaled her in one swift motion burying its arm into her stomach up to the elbow and coming out the other side. As it ran Hareneta heard metal clattering to the ground and she watched below the charging creature all the bullets that had littered its body were being pushed from its chest and face, clattering to the ground in a trail of glinting steel. She watched as her closest friend, Brisk Quietus, ripped the knife from the creature’s chest and desperately cut into its flesh. The wounds closed as quickly as they were rent and her limbs were quickly put 20 feet out of the way. 

As the beast’s gaze turned to Hareneta, the only person standing after Charles snuck away with the truck, she realized she hadn’t moved an inch since the drone emerged. She should have bee struck with fear for her life, anger for her team, disgust at the beast. That wasn’t what she felt; No, she felt something much more disturbing. Awe. Not the awe someone feels when watching a car crash, something that is so horrible you can’t turn away, but the awe one feels when gazing from the top of a mountain. She had been stunned by the beauty of this beast. The blindingly brilliant colour of its blood-soaked teeth and claws, the dangerous glint in its eyes which seem to glow in the darkness, the supernatural grace of its massive gaunt body. A force of nature that could not rightfully be stopped. 

It was then that she noticed it approaching. Not the rushed charge it performed earlier, but the slow stalking of a creature attempting not to spook an animal. She imagined how she must look to the being before her. A delicate creature, unable to hurt or flee the apex predator. It stalked towards her the way she had approached cats as a child. 

It placed one hand on the side of her face. It was warm, and sticky from her friends’ blood. It then smiled. It hadn’t stopped grinning from ear to ear since it emerged from the pit but she could tell that the look it gave her was different. One of pity and love, rather than the manic glee of a hunter. The world went dark as she felt cold air at the base of her neck.


End file.
